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Friday, May 24, 2013

The GOP Won’t “Overplay its Hand” on the Obama IRS scandal...Because it Can't

It’s only been a couple weeks since news broke that the IRS
unconstitutionally targeted conservative groups/organizations for additional
scrutiny and harassment in the run-up to the 2012 election, and already,
President Obama’s most ardent apologists are acknowledging the severity of this
problem, calling the White House out on its arrogant mendacity and joining
Republicans in their efforts to uncover the truth and bring all culpable
parties to justice.

Yeah, right.

Actually, many on the Left have been trying to shift the
focus from what is clearly a serious scandal involving unconstitutional acts by
the government to...the GOP. But how? Republicans, whose role in this sordid
affair (if any) is limited to that of victims, are rightly incensed by what in
all likelihood was a calculated political efforts to boost the electoral
prospects of the president and other Democrats by hamstringing conservative
groups and individuals.

Well, as gifted as the Left is at creating alternate realities, even they can’t inculpate the GOP in this mess,
it’s pushing a different narrative: Republicans are eagerly ginning up controversy and trying to capitalize on these so-called "scandals", but they're so blinded by their utter contempt and disdain for the president that they're already overreaching and blowing these things way out of proportion, oblivious to the pitfalls of ganging up on a president who's still a lot more popular than they are.

Charlie Cook, an idiot, has been pushing this narrative with the utmost
vigor inNational Journal. Last week, he wrote that “Republicans Should Go Easy on Obama.” (I tried to find where Cook had written the
same or something similar about Democrats and President Bush, but I could find
no such case.) On Tuesday, he claimed that Republicans are so blinded by their “hatred of Obama” that “they can’t see how little impact the 'scandals' have had on
public opinion.” (Yes, he actually put "scandals" in quotation marks.)

“The simple
fact is that although the Republican sharks are circling,” Cookwrote, “there isn’t a
trace of blood in the water.” He based this on an out-of-context quote from
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the results of two polls (one of which was
an outlier that pegged Obama’s job-approval rating at 53%, five percentage
points higher than the current RCP average, and the other being Gallup, which as
we know nailed
President Romney’s margin of victory in the 2012 election).

Cook recites these
polls in his latest article, in which he likens the bipartisan investigation into
to the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton that proved to hurt Republicans more
than the president: “The current situation is reminding many
folks of the impeachment controversy in 1998” he says, raising the question of
how many “folks” Cook talks to who don’t think exactly like him. “Blinded by
their hatred for President Clinton, Republicans made irrational decisions then,
and they are making the same mistakes today.”

AnotherNational Journal
contributor,Ron
Fournier(who
is not an idiot but is pretty obtuse) yesterdayaccusedRNC Chairman Reince Priebus of “demonizing,
politicizing and overreaching just enough to jeopardize his cause.” This is the same Ron Fournier who earlier this week expressly stated that the White House “has demonstrated an inability
and/or unwillingness to tell the full truth about the IRS scandal and a spate
of other controversies.” Either Fournier is suffering from some kind of bipolar
disorder or he believes that the Obama White House’s serial dishonesty is just
as consistent with innocence as culpability.

Republicans failed to
capitalize on President Bill Clinton’s inappropriate conduct by over-playing
their hand and pushing impeachment. Not only did they fail to drive him from
office, the GOP ended up losing a handful of House seats in the 1998 midterms
instead of adding seats as initially expected.

Republicans allowed
themselves to look as if they were primarily interested in scoring political
points and overturning the results of the 1996 election, even if it meant
paralyzing the government.

That same danger
exists once again for the GOP.

With fundraising
playing such a huge part in our politics, some conservative groups will be
tempted to use the trifecta of controversies to play to their bases to boost
anger and fundraising.

This,
in turn, will make the issues appear more and more partisan, giving the
president the same opportunity that Clinton used when he sought to rise above
“politics” and called for members of both parties to address public policy
challenges.

He
then undermined his own argument by describing some of the differences
between 1998 and 2013 that make any comparisons of the two situations sound
ridiculous.

I’ll spare you excerpts from the ramblings of ditsy hacks like Joan Walsh, Greg Sargent
and Michael Tomasky; let it suffice to say that they've been even more
defensive in their commentary on these affairs.

The logical rebuttal to these warnings of Republican “overreach”
is simple. Republicans won’t overreach on—and won’t overblow—these scandals, esp.
the IRS scandal, because they can’t. Yes, you could conceivably say something
that exaggerates the magnitude of any one particular scandal (though I’ve yet
to hear any such thing from a Republican to date), but the cumulation of these
things—from the abject incompetence of the ill-conceived (and even more poorly
executed) "Fast & Furious" operation toadministration’s
repeated prevarication about Benghazi to the possible unconstitutionality of
the Justice Dept. preying on reporters andthe definite
unconstitutionality of the IRS’s treatment of conservatives—is far greater than
any scandal or combination of scandals involving a U.S. president and his
administration.

Sure, other presidents have done terrible and inexcusablethings.
Andrew Jackson forced thousands of Cherokee (including my great-great-great-great
grandparents) to take leave of their homes in the southeastern U.S. and trudge
miles westward in a journey that killed thousands of them and injured countless
others. L.B.J. and his administration repeatedly misled Americans about the
Vietnam war and continued to send American soldiers, many of whom were drafted,
to die and/or suffer serious bodily harm in the jungles of southeast Asia after
it became clear they were fighting a losing battle. Richard Nixon...well, we
know what he did. And, don’t get me started on F.D.R.

Whether or not these or other nefarious deeds by part presidents
fit the definition of “scandal” is a discussion for another time. I’m not
saying the pain and suffering caused by the Obama Administration’s actions is
worse than the Trail of Tears, but unlike Obama, Jackson had the legal
authority to do what he did.

In addition to the unconstitutionality of the IRS’s actions, there’s
another compelling reason why the gravity of that particular scandal can’t be
overstated. As I explained in a YouTube video yesterday, the effects of the IRS’s
misdeeds were, among other things, to unfairly hamstring conservative efforts
in the 2012 campaign. Libertarian/Republican candidates and causes were
deprived of much-needed capital during a critical election cycle. Who knows how
many races would have turned out differently had the playing field been level?

I don’t mean to invite people to reconsider what has already come
to pass, and I certainly don’t want to dwell on what might have been. This much
is undeniable, however: as long as even one politician elected in a close race
in 2012, the outcome of which might have been different had the IRS not engaged
in these unconstitutional practices, is still in office, we are still living
with the consequences of what the IRS did, and that means this scandal still
has legs. In that sense, nobody is “overreaching” just by
pulling out all the stops to make sure that the truth will come out and all
complicit parties will be exposed and brought to justice.